Shock Treatment (1981) on Netflix
Brad and Janet Majors are picked from the audience of Marriage Maze in Denton, a town run by television. Brad is sent to Dentonvale and Janet is pushed toward stardom.
- Netflix2.8/5
- IMDb5.7/105,934 votes
- Rotten Tomatoes43%
Trailer
Plot summary
Brad and Janet Majors are married, and the romance has gone flat. Their hometown of Denton now belongs to the DTV network, where residents either perform on its shows or watch them. Seated in the studio audience, the couple is chosen for the game show Marriage Maze, and its host, Bert Schnick, judges Brad an emotional cripple and has him sent to Dentonvale, the mental hospital that is itself a reality show, run by Cosmo and Nation McKinley. Farley Flavors, the fast food magnate behind the network, urges Janet to pursue stardom. Her parents, Emily and Harry Weiss, chase television fame of their own, appearing on Marriage Maze and then on Happy Homes. Betty Hapschatt and Judge Oliver Wright, hosts of the Denton Dossier, stay unconvinced.
Cast
- Darlene Johnsonas Emily Weiss
- Wendy Raebeckas Macy Struthers
Did you know?!Facts and trivia about Shock Treatment (1981)
Can contain spoilers, watch the movie first.
- To obtain the American sound required for several of the musical numbers, about 50 American soldiers were brought in to record the choruses; according to Hartley, the servicemen were unsure of the subject matter of the lyrics and how they would be used in the film.
- Fans resented Richard O'Brien's tagline, "It's not a sequel... it's not a prequel... it's an equal", and O'Brien later recanted, criticizing the film frequently and going so far as to refer to it as "an abortion".
- With her career on the rise, Susan Sarandon demanded more money than the budget allowed, so auditions were held at The Roxy theater, where Jessica Harper, previously of Brian De Palma's cult musical Phantom of the Paradise, impressed the filmmakers with her singing.
- Television had been a heavy motif in the script, so production designer Brian Thomson reworked the story to set it in a giant TV studio, using a film studio in England, which shaved $1 million from the budget and gave a controlled environment.
SPOILER
O'Brien wrote a rough script for a direct Rocky Horror sequel titled Revenge of the Old Queen, in which Brad's brother Steve seeks revenge on the aliens after Brad becomes a Las Vegas go-go dancer and falls to his death from a trapeze; Sonny is revealed as the illegitimate son of Janet and Frank.- For his two roles, DeYoung modeled his performance of Brad after David Eisenhower, and based the character Farley on Jack Nicholson.
